The K2 Group’s exhibition traces the history of the almost forgotten art of wall tapestry in Hungary. It brings together wall-hanging works by young artists who approach this time-honored heritage from a fresh, contemporary perspective. These are soft images that also stimulate our sense of touch. These are the ancient, home–adornment relatives of painting—embedded in today’s context.
For millennia — from the temple hangings that separated sanctuaries to the tapestries adorning royal palaces — textiles not only defined spaces but also told stories. Among the few surviving examples, the famous Bayeux Tapestry is a veritable embroidered medieval comic book. Similar tapestries made the cold stone walls of old castles feel more like home. The Renaissance revolution, however, “replaced” the tapestries on the walls with cool oil paintings. The new, perspectival paintings opened a window onto another world—but they were not to be touched, for then the illusion of space would be lost.
The surviving tapestries, the “soft pictures,” preserved the tactile, warm, and sensual visual tradition. But over the past half–millennium, they have been pushed into the background, becoming the privilege of the few. Just as the age of mammals followed that of the dinosaurs, so too did paintings take over from tapestries in Western interiors. At the same time, the tapestry did not die out, but continued to exist in the shadow of increasingly accessible oil paintings, much like dinosaurs did within the class of birds. The tapestry — ranging from folk-style homespun pieces to tapestries produced in royal workshops — also remained a branch of applied art with a regal status, even if it could not rival the central role of painting as it became increasingly bourgeois.
The modernists of the 20th century also discovered it for themselves, and in the world of contemporary art, it has found its place within the broad category of textile art — indeed, it is experiencing a new renaissance. Today, it is no longer a large-scale variation of existing paintings — that is, a luxury-quality “woven reproduction” — but rather an autonomous form of expression that draws on its own unique character.
Exhibiting artists: Boglárka Dankó, Annamária Gáspár, Emese Kádár, Adrian Kiss, Eszter Júlia Kuzma, Mira Dalma Makai, Tímea Piróth, Péter Puklus